“Multiple shooters” reported by an Australian man staying in the room right next to Stephen Paddock at the Mandalay Bay

In what is sure to fuel even more speculation and intrigue surrounding the recent mass shooting in Las Vegas, an Australian man in the Mandalay Bay Casino Hotel the night of the attack is claiming there was more than one person firing on the crowd of 22,000 attending a country music festival 400 feet below.

In an interview with Australia’s Courier-Mail, Brian Hodge, who at one point worked in a casino on the continent’s Gold Coast, said he was staying in a room on the 32nd floor, right next to the one known shooter, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock was staying in. He said he managed to get out of his room — which he said was Room 32134 — and made it safely downstairs but then hid in a bush for several hours after the shooting stopped.

“I got outside safely and was hiding in bushes,” he said. “There were multiple people dead and multiple shooters. I was just hiding waiting for police to come get us.”

Multiple shooters.

“It was a machine gun from the room next to me,” he added. “My floor is a crime scene. They killed a security guard on my floor.”

Actually, no security guards were killed, according to other published reports and Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, though a hotel security guard was indeed shot, allegedly by Paddock, but survived and then led LVPD and SWAT officers to Paddock’s room.

Hodge isn’t the only witness claiming more than one shooter. A woman, “Gayle,” called in to talk radio giant Michael Savage’s program on Wednesday claiming that she, too, heard multiple shooters and that one of them might actually have been much closer to the Route 91 venue than Paddock, who was sequestered in his hotel room high atop the festival.

At one point, she recalled thinking, “Oh my god, it sounds like there is somebody on the ground that is shooting.” She also said that a girl standing very near to her was shot straight-on in her abdomen, though at the time she was wounded she and Gayle were standing looking away from the Mandalay Bay, which was behind them and over their right shoulder.

“How could a bullet be coming from our right, which was on our west — we’re facing direct south. A bullet would have to come straight up and make a 90-degree left turn to go into her stomach,” she said.

As further reported by The National Sentinel, Lombardo clarified: “At face value, he had to have some help at some point and we want to ensure that that’s the answer. Maybe he was a superhuman who figured this out all on his own but it would be hard for me to believe that.”

There are other reasons to believe that there could have been more than one shooter involved. As Lombardo noted further, police are in possession of evidence they say indicates Paddock intended to survive the attack — meaning, he wasn’t planning to kill himself, which is reportedly what he did in the end. (Related: Vegas sheriff says shooter may have been ‘radicalized’)

Also, Lombardo said there is evidence to support his statement that Paddock “led a secret life” that was unbeknownst to most people around him. In addition, Lombardo said that Paddock also researched other locations including Boston and Chicago in which to commit mass murder, having eventually decided on Vegas.

“These developments suggest that he was scouting multiple locations, in multiple cities, from which to unleash his senseless carnage. This is premeditation on steroids, which only renders the lack of apparent motive even more terrifying. We’re probably looking at months and months of meticulous planning here,” writes Guy Benson at Townhall.com.

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.